HSBC in November 2002 signed a $500m medium-term project finance framework agreement with six Iranian commercial banks: Melli, Saderat, Mellat, Tejarat, Sepah and the Export Development Bank according to the IranReporter.com

Iran is firmly on many banks’ radar screens, though. HSBC set up a representative office in Tehran in 1999 after an absence of four decades and has won some key financing mandates. Dr Nasser Homapour, HSBC representative in Tehran, was recently quoted as saying that Iran is too prosperous to ignore.

In October 2004 it was reported that the chairman of the nation’s Homeland Security Advisory Council was helping to guide America’s security strategy at the same time he was a top executive with an international banking firm that was investigated and eventually fined more than $100 million for cash transfers to rogue nations, including Iraq, Iran, Libya and Cuba, a Newsday investigation has found.

This case involved UBS and Joseph Grano Jr.

By October 2004 it was public knowledge in the United States that HSBC wholly owned subsidiary Hoousehold International is charged with RICO – racketeering, influence and corruption- along with tax preparer H&R Block, charged with RICO from its own Household Finance Division, and settled a law suit regarding late application of payments for almost ten years.

All of these events took place after HSBC bought the troubled predatory lender. IF HSBC condones the stated actions, does it suggest HSBC has a total disregard for American Homeland Security? Chartered in the U.S. under a national charter by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, does HSBC use its global power to skirt and ignore U.S. regulations?

We report it here – you decide. But there are sanctions against Iran, and laws against cash transfers to rogue nations. During the presidential debates of 2004 John Kerry and George Bush both identified rogue nations as Iran and North Korea. Remember the axis of evil?